


The Third Virtue

by Quicksilver_ink



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Backstory, Multi, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3061895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilver_ink/pseuds/Quicksilver_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teo and Lippti were created to be more than simply the guides of Historia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Virtue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jikanet_tanaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jikanet_tanaka/gifts).



> Written for Jikanet-Tanaka for the Radiant Historia 2014 Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr!

The priest looked around his new surroundings, clenched hands hidden in the long sleeves of his austere black robe. He’d helped create this strange pocket of reality, knew how it worked on the most fundamental level, but he was still surprised to see the whole. Historia was a confusing array of walls and platforms and staircases of solid stone, all suspended in the black void. They rose and fell about him like leaves suspended in turbulent water, mirroring his own unsettled emotions.  

“Welcome to Historia, Ausir.”  The voice was unfamiliar and high, like a child’s, but Ausir recognized the inflection instantly.

“Dion?” He didn’t dare turn around until he’d gotten himself under control. “No, of course not. You must be his…” He’d meant to call them _constructs_ , that was what they had all called the guides Dion was planning to create for Historia, but the word died at his lips when as they appeared before him, seated atop a high wall.

There were two of them, which he’d expected. He wasn’t particularly surprised to see that they wore fine brocade gowns in patterns appropriate for any of the priestly class — the guides of Historia needed to be seen as wise and trustworthy — although one wore the lavender of the Order of Cloth and the other the orange-gold of the Lachesans. (Significant or simply whimsy? Dion, an Atropon monk, had always complained about the plain black of their own order’s habits.)  And he’d known they would be children, and that he’d see traces of Dion in them, body and soul. And that they’d have the pointed ears common among those with Satyros ancestry, like so many priests did.

Like Isia did.

He hadn’t anticipated the pang it would give him, seeing the mingling of his friends’ features on these two homunculi with the bodies of children.

“It would not be inaccurate to say we are his children, even if we came into being in an unorthodox fashion,”  the one in purple said, gently. She was clearly female even if her face, from chin to cheekbone, was hauntingly like Dion. Her platinum hair, longer than Dion’s had ever been, suited the familiar features better than Ausir had expected. “My name is Lippti. My brother is Teo.”

“You’re a surprise,” he told her bluntly. “Dion is — was a — You’re supposed to be fashioned from his _soul_ _._ ”

“And so we are.” Teo had shorter hair, browner and curlier than Lippti’s, and it was all Ausir could do to keep from reaching up to feel his own locks, although scarcely any brown was left. “Can’t you tell yourself?”

“I can,” Ausir admitted, after closing his eyes to get a better look. Teo had more of the silver flashes in his green aura, Lippti gold, but all together it was undeniably Dion. “And I suppose… well, in retrospect, this explains some things.” Painful, to learn there were things he hadn’t understood about Dion until after the man’s death, but miraculous too.Isi would—- he shook his head. “That’s not what I’m here about.”

“You want to know why the Ritual keeps failing?” Teo asked.

“Yes. We’ve tried five times already. And still the Mana breach shows no sign of closing, the desertification no sign of halting. Five failed attempts. Eight lives wasted.” _And yet_ I _still live beyond my time…_

“We’re sorry, but if you came here to save them-” Teo began.

“I know how the Chronicle works!” Ausir snapped. “I know I can’t change anything before I opened it. We wouldn’t be in this mess if that were possible. Isia would have gone back to stop the war, or at least the weapons that worsened the breach. We’d have sent back Bibi, or Tellas, or the entire damnorder. We’d—”

“Calm down, Ausir,” Lippti said soothingly, her tones so familiar he half expected she’d offer him tea next —  Dion’s solution to everything from adolescent heartbreak to existential angst.  “We know things look bleak. But hope remains. We’ve learned why the Ritual has failed.”

“I’m listening.”

The twins exchanged glances, then after a nod from his co-construct — sister? — Teo began. “You were absolutely right thatbothCaster and Sacrifice must be willing.”

Ausir grimaced at the memory. It had not been his choice to use prisoners of war as test subjects, nor Isia’s, but he’d cooperated, and his soul would bear that black mark for the rest of his life. _Wrong metaphor. It’s Isia’s soul._

Teo continued. “And of sound mind —  Tellas had been so mad with grief for his daughter that it unbalanced Gilbert’s own magic.”

Ausir exhaled shakily. “So that’s what happened. It’s a delicate spell, but Gilbert was one of the best. Back when we thought it could still be an ordinary joint-cast, we thought he and Ahna… well.” He made himself breathe slowly in, out, in, out, until the grief freezing his heart receded to simply a needle-prick of cold. “I’m sorry. You would already know that. So what about the rest? What went wrong? Once we know how to make it succeed, I can-”

“It still wouldn’t work.” Teo told him bluntly. “You’re more than powerful enough, but you lack spiritual enlightenment.”

“Enlightenment? I’m a _priest_ _,_ ” Ausir snapped back, lip curling at the insult. 

“You also think you should be dead. A Sacrifice seeking death as release won’t work.” Within an eye-blink’s time, Lippti vanished from her perch, appearing at his side. She took his hand. “Isi’s been right to keep you from trying, Aus.“

He pulled his hand away as if burned. “Don’tuse those names. You’ve no right.”

“When he gave us his soul he left us access to his memories,” she said to him, as if he hadn’t been the one to suggest that to Dion, back when they were all trying to figure out how the constructs would have the necessary magical knowledge.

Back when Dion was still alive.

Back before _he_ ’d died.

Ausir shivered. “You have the appearance of children. It’s not a comfortable conjunction.”

“May we call you Uncle Aus, then?” Teo suggested from his perch on the wall.

Ausir glared at the boy. “We’re getting off topic. Why is the Ritual still failing? What do you mean by Spiritual Enlightenment?”

“The central problem is that the Caster’s soul is not retaining enough of the Sacrifice’s Mana.” Teo held his hands apart, both palm up as if he held invisible weights. “There’s still some transfer, when the connection between the Sacrifice’s body and the Caster’s soul is severed.” He brought the hands together, side-by-side, then let the left one fall. “But too much is lost. A weak soul cannot hold onto the power.”

“Damn your soul to the Void, Dion, I told you-!” Ausir smacked his fist into his thigh. “Forgive me, it was nothing personal.”

The two child-constructs who bore the remnant’s of Dion’s soul looked merely amused at the blasphemy. “No offense taken,” Teo said.

“So is the Ritual doomed? Is that it? Our plan failed?” Ausir ran a hand through his hair. “Or do we simply need to keep trying until we can find a soul that’s strong enough to carry the power over?” _More lives wasted, more failures…_

“No. With work, you may be able to nurture your soul - or another’s — to make it strong enough.” Lippti reappeared on the wall, beside her brother. 

“Youknownot my soul that’s keeping me breathing.” Ausir folded his arms, hands buried in the opposite sleeves. Dion had been just as bad, treating him as an ordinary person, as if he _hadn’t_ died back in the war, as if it were perfectly natural to walk around with another’s soul tethering Mana to your still-breathing corpse.

“Isia’s soul, then.” Teo sounded a little exasperated. “You’ve opened the Chronicle, so as long as you do not place yourself in mortal peril, you’ve got ample time. Stabilizing the breech isn’t the only challenge you face.”

Of course they’d know from Dion’s memories that the Ritual was nothing more than a stopgap measure, to buy the time the Chronicle’s powers had failed to give them. “And this ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’ you mentioned?”

“Remember the three Virtues,” Lippti replied, in Dion’s best Enigmatic Teacher tones. “Love, Courage, and Hope.”

Ausir fled back to the mortal world.

 

* * *

 

“Welcome back, Ausir,” Lippti said, as she always did. If her voice sounded any different, Ausir was too distracted to notice.

He sank to his knees on the flagstones and stared down at his trembling hands. They were clean. Why were they clean? Had her blood stayed behind in the mortal world? “It was a civil war. Again,” he told them, his voice made hoarse from the choking black smoke, from shouting to be heard over the fighting. “Emperor died, at a banquet this time. The peasants revolted — of course they did, he died of excess while so many of them starve. But they went for the temples this time around. Sessil, Rossa… Isi told me to flee with the Chronicle, but when she screamed I went back… I couldn’t let them… but it was—” His voice failed him, his eyes burned, but no tears fell.

“Sshh, shhh, we know. We saw.” Teo’s voice was unusually gentle, and then Ausir felt the slight warmth of hands on his shoulders. The twins had come down from their customary seat on the wall. “We mourn her too.”

Ausir tried to shake them off. “You’ve no right. You’ve never met her.”

“We still have Dion’s memories. And…” Lippti brushed her fingers over her ears. “We know what he made us to be.”

Ausir said nothing.

“Look at me, Ausir,” Teo commanded, and when the wizard-priest refused, the boy’s fingers took his chin and raised it until their eyes met.

The twins had kept their distance until now, except for when Lippti had come to take his hand on his first visit, so Ausir had never seen the color of their eyes. Below the brown curls, Teo’s eyes were the same warm copper of the eyes that, minutes ago, Ausir had seen go glassy and then closed with his own bloodstained hand.

His vision blurred.

“She was always brave, wasn’t she, Aus?” Lippti asked, and her voice — right beside him and yet far away — wavered. “Even when w- you were all novices, and she stood up to the bullies in the dormitories. And during the war.” Lippti didn’t need to say more; Ausir knew even better than Dion had what Isia was capable of. The girl went on. “And when…when Dion split our-hissoul to make Historia and she had to finish the spell alone. She never faltered or showed fear.”

“She was courage made flesh,” he whispered, and let himself weep as two pairs of small arms closed around him.

“You can save her, you know,” Lippti said after a time. “That’s the Chronicle’s blessing.”

“I know. And I will. But that’s not enough.” He leaned back, pulling out of the twins’ embrace. “You know as well as I do that she’ll just keep trading her life for others unless she’s got another way to save them. I’d give her the Chronicle if it weren’t bound to me already.” He ran his fingers through his hair; they came away sooty. “No, I think we’re going to need a second key to Historia. I’ll go back to my first node, well before the civil war.”

“It won’t be as powerful,” Lippti cautioned. “When the Chronicle was made, you still had-”

“Tellas and Anha and the rest, I know.” Ausir exhaled. “But it will be something. And we know more than we did then.” He withdrew the Chronicle from his sleeve and held it in his hands, looking down at the grey hide cover. He was all too conscious of the Isia and the twins’ pointed ears, of his own oversized hands and feet. Mastery over Flux only came from mingled bloodlines.  A thought came to him. “Maybe we can even bind it with ordinary leather this time.”

 

* * *

 

“Welcome to Historia,” Lippti said. There was the faintest hint of amusement in her voice.

The woman at Ausir’s side tensed. He’d forgotten how much of a shock the twins’ voices had been, his first visit to Historia. “Dion — no. Ausir said you’re Lippti?” She turned to face the boy. “And you’re Teo. You’d already know I’m Isia.”

“We do indeed,” Teo said. “We are pleased to meet you at last.”

“Likewise.” Isia folded her arms in her sleeves and bowed. “Well met, Dion’s children.”

The twins, seated as usual on the wall, bowed in return. “So the creation of a second Chronicle was a success,” Teo said, after they straightened. “Have you learned aught else?”

“The fundamental problem of the stabilizing spell remains intractable,” Isia said crisply. “We streamlined it somewhat, but it’s still a cobbled-together mess,  too complex for a standard joint-casting, and requires too much power for a single mage, no matter their innate potential. I’m afraid we’re still stuck with the bloodier model.” She made a face. “There’s got to be a better way, but Dextera and Sinistra know I can’t see how. But hopefully this will buy us — or the next generation — the time we need to find it.”

“Next generation?”

Ausir found himself smiling. “Sessil and Rossa have a daughter. They’ve moved to the temple in Granorg to keep her safe — lower infant mortality away from the capital. There’s also a natural Laypoint beneath the town.”

The twins stared. Finally, Teo said, slowly, “We thought neither of them were interested in the prerequisite activities.”

“Rossa found a solution to that. Hopefully that sort of thing doesn’t run in the family.” Isia coughed. “The only alternative to using deathblood for the new Chronicle’s was its opposite, but we were short on viable candidates to supply it. The birth rate has plummeted since the breach opened, and even before that…” She sighed, folding her hands in front of her.

It was an old sorrow, but everyone stayed silent for a long moment even so. Finally Ausir shook his head. “We have two Chronicles now. It looks like both of us can use either to enter Historia.”

“Correct.” Teo seemed relieved to return to business. “This will make it much easier for the Caster’s soul to grow strong enough to hold the necessary Mana.”

“So it needs to be Ausir and I after all,” Isia said quietly. “I had hoped… How much time do we have?”

Lippti smiled faintly. “With the Chronicles, you could live a lifetime in just a year. You may have to — Ausir isn’t ready yet.”

“ _I’m_ not ready yet,” Isia muttered. “Do you know how hard it’s been to get him to see himself as having a future? He’s forever dwelling on the past, on what can’t be changed, and doesn’t see that it’s time to move forward.”

The twins blinked in unison, as if in joint realization. Ausir had long since stopped finding that habit creepy.

“Switch Chronicles,” Teo told them, sharply. Lippti nodded.

Blinking his own surprise, Ausir turned to Isia, reaching inside his robes for the original Chronicle. He hesitated. She faced him, bronze eyes meeting his steadily, already holding her new Chronicle. Its cover seemed even whiter against her warm brown hands, the weight slight. Could he really trade her the new, untainted Chronicle for the one bound in death and sins of the past?

“Here. Let me carry that burden for a while.” She reached out one hand, completely unafraid, and Ausir placed the grey volume on her waiting palm. He rested his other hand on the other Chronicle.

Ausir swayed slightly as the old, grey-bound Chronicle left his grasp. The new one weighed no less, but he felt strangely light all the same. And Isia, brave, beautiful Isi, didn’t so much as flinch as she took the older book into her care. He swallowed a sudden lump.

“I thought so,” Teo remarked thoughtfully. “It’s still not enough, though.”

“May we inspect the Chronicles?” Lippti asked them. At Isia’s nod, the twins vanished from the wall and in front of the pair.

Isia stumbled back in surprised. “That was sudden,” she said, catching herself. Then she held her new Chronicle out towards the nearer twin, Lippti. “Here.”

Lippti placed her hands over Isia’s. The girl closed her eyes briefly, then looked up at Isia.

“She has your eyes, Aus,” Isi breathed in wonder. “Dion’s face but your eyes. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

Ausir glanced sharply at the girl, who looked back at him, the faintest hint of worry in the droop of her mouth. “No, she doesn’t. Hers are violet, like Dion’s. I’ve got brown eyes.“

Isia didn’t stop looking at the girl. “You do now. Before the war, before you…”

“Before Idied.”

“Yes. Back then, they were like these. And like Dion’s. But his were darker, these are more grey-purple. Sort of like heather.” She glanced back at him. “They change back when you’ve been using a lot of Flux, you know. Almost through the entire shaping of the new Chronicle they were like this.” She smiled sadly. “It was a bit nostalgic. I liked your old eyes.”

Ausir stared down at the girl who had Dion’s face and Isia’s ears and his eyes for a long time. He felt a hand take his, and he closed his fingers around it unthinkingly, then turned to face the boy. Teo peered up at him, Isia’s eyes in Dion’s face, beneath the thick brown curls so like his own had been once. He swallowed, and blinked back the pricking in the corners of his eyes.

“When I first came to Historia you said I could think of you as Dion’s children. And we all meant for you to oversee the ritual. But that’s not the whole story, is it,” Ausir said, quietly, still holding Teo’s hand.

The boy shook his head, pulling their clasped hands up to his cheek.

Lippti clung to Ausir’s leg like the child she resembled. “Dion made us to be his hope for the future,” she said, her voice muffled in his robes. “His, and yours, and Isia’s. He loved you both, you know.”

Isia knelt down and embraced both of them. She didn’t speak, and her breathing came in shudders.

“So this is what enlightenment feels like,” Ausir said, climbing down to join her. He put his arms out to encircle their strange family. “I thought it would be more dramatic.”

“You still have a little work to do,” Teo said sternly. Then he sniffled, and his voice was much more like a child’s as he continued, “But not much. I… don’t want you to go so soon.”

Go?” Isia glanced at him, then her eyes widened. “No. You mean the Ritual. Why _now?_ ”  Her voice cracked. “Aus,no. I’ve told you, it doesn’tmatterwhy you survived, it doesn’t _matter_ that it was just a fluke. Sometimes things happen for no reason, even under the Watchful Gods, and I’mgladmy soul is keeping you alive, even if it was an accident, because I love you-”

“I love you, too,” he said, shifting so he could kiss the top of her head. It was awkward, and he had to lean into Teo, who grumbled a protest. “I think maybethiswas the reason. If it wasn’t the will of the Gods, then I’m going to make it my reason.”

“That’s blasphemy,” she told him thickly. “You’re going to get defrocked if you keep talking like that. How long can we delay the Ritual?” she added, although this last was clearly directed at the twins.

“I said before, you can live a lifetime in a single year,” Lippti said, sounding much more like the enigmatic guide she normally played, and less like a little girl. “Some people manage it even without the Chronicles.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to LadyNighteyes and Catteries for beta-reading, and LadyNighteyes for letting me borrow her eyecolor headcanon.


End file.
